Strike cure found by Cyprus government

Air-traffic controllers were striking way too much recently.  Cyprus government took an unusually fast and serious action.  They found a cure.  Cyprus Mail reports:

The government bill, fast-tracked by the executive and the legislature working in rare unison, makes it a criminal offence for any ATC to refuse to work when required, and provides for penalties of up two years in prison and/or a fine of €2,550. The penalties are provided for under an existing law.

Given the economic downfall, unemployment rates, and the dependency of Cyprus on air traffic (being an island and a tourism attraction), I think this is reasonable and much needed.

Thank God Not Everything Is Software

On an average day I’d see a comics like this, smile and walk by.  But I am currently involved in a project that makes me feel stronger about it.

Consider, for example, a client request I got a couple of days ago:

We are using the database for this project, right?  We are using it for a reason – to store data.  If we store data, we should be able to retrieve data.  So I want a report that retrieves data.  I want a report with all data, all on a single page.  But it shouldn’t be too much or too complicated.

Funny?  Well, I laughed at first too.  But when I actually managed to build that report, I had a few things to think about.  And a few to reconsider.

Google : 60,000 dollars for a bug report

I’m a Google fan, there is no reason to hide it.  And this is one of the reasons.  They are setting a good example to follow.

Open sourcing company products changes the way code is written.  The moment programmers know someone else will be looking at their code, they start paying more attention as to what and how they write.  Paying money to outsiders for discovering bugs with company code is like the next level of Open Source Software.  Just open source gives the possibility to review.  Money provide a good incentive to.